In Space, No One Will Do Your Laundry

University of Rhode Island design professor Karl Aspelund wants you to think about astronaut socks. In fact, he hopes his work with the 100 Year Starship Project—figuring out what kind of clothes space travelers will need for a long-duration mission—will change the way you dress, too.

How did you get interested in what clothes astronauts could use on a 100-year-long trip into space?

I had an NPR driveway moment when I heard Dr. Mae Jemison talking about the 100 Year Starship; I had to sit and listen to the whole thing. I immediately got this idea, and ran inside to email her saying, "Okay, youre planning this long trip, but have you thought about what youll wear?" She hadnt. Textiles and clothing are so integral to our lives, but that gets taken for granted.

Thinking about how to take this incredibly enmeshed part of human culture and separate it from the planet leads to some strange questions and problems, but its all so mundane that people dont really think about it. Im an anthropologist with a design background, so the design factor with the human behavior factor behind it makes it the ideal project. Youd think someone would have worked on it before, but I guess this is the time. Great, lets do it! T-shirts in space!

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Whats wrong with the space clothes we have now?

They still havent figured out how to do laundry in space. On the space station, they just throw away clothes and never see them again. You cant do that on a 20-year mission or on a Mars base. What it comes down to are these very important questions of sustainability, using natural resources, recycling, use of energy and water, controlling pollutants. All of these questions are also enormously important for life on earth. You think about the problem as being in a closed ecosystem flying through space, but then you remember that the earth is also a closed ecosystem flying through space.

So your research on space laundry will affect us on earth, too?

Looking at these problems in terms of a multigenerational space mission helps clear away a lot of debris. We can solve problems that are important to our continued survival on the planet, like energy use, water use, and the growing of crops.

As for the laundry, I would bet you a really good lunch that the biggest portion of your environmental footprint comes from your clothes: Youre using energy, water, and pollutants to make and clean them. Multiply that times a lifetime, and youve got a major problem. We have to solve that.

What are the biggest issues to confront for designing better astronaut outfits?

Materials are important. Well, were certainly not going to be sending sheep into space or growing cotton . . . but maybe we are! Nobody knows. Are we going to be growing cotton on Mars, or harvesting spider silk as we pass Jupiter? Weve got to think about this, and then circle back to the planet to apply those changes here.

One of the major places to start is miniaturization. Right now, if youre going to manufacture clothing, you need rooms full of equipment. Well need to minimize these processes. The second thing we need to get really good at is recycling. Recycling, repurposing, reusing anything and everything, including clothing.

Are the coverings going to become fibers and fabrics as we know them? Maybe not. This very quickly becomes a cultural investigation. What is clothing? Maybe we need to rethink what it means to be covered or clothed. Are we coated somehow, instead of wearing pieces of fabric? That could get really weird, but maybe thats what needs to happen if the civilization is going to move off the planet. Weve been harvesting, spinning, weaving, cutting, and sewing for tens of thousands of years. Are we just going to stop? That seems fairly unlikely, but maybe we have to. Maybe its time for something else.

Why do you think we have such a strong cultural attachment to clothes?

People need identities, and a differentiation between work and play. This is deeply ingrained. People who are forced to wear the same clothes all the time in prison or the military get very weird about it. They start to automatically modify their prison uniform or military garb in an effort to establish their identity. The idea that you are what you wear is more than just a cliché: Its how people distinguish you and recognize you, and its how people bond with you. Its also a huge part of hierarchy in a military or school situation. Its all part of creating a sense of community. If you start messing with that, you start messing with a piece of local culture.

Whats next?

Im just beginning to try and get funding to start looking at these areas of concern. Once we have that, were going to start assembling knowledge bases for manufacturing, culture, and so on. The Mars Societys Mars Desert Research Station in Utah is collaborating with me and my students to plan a two-week mission simulation in 2014, and what wed aim to do there is to have prototypes of things and materials to try out. It might not be thrilling, but well probably have someone out there in the desert wearing something for two weeks, then Ill interview them, and Ill be interviewing as many astronauts as possible. I may even interview prisoners, just to see how this idea of "this is what youll be wearing for the next year" affects people.

Right now in the ISS theyre wearing polo shirts and chinos. Everyday earth clothes, if you will. Fine, great, but if were going to do that, how are we going to make them? How are we going to wash them? It always comes back to the laundry question. Somebody has got to solve that laundry question.